News July 2016

The Hinkley delay has certainly ruffled diplomatic feathers, given China’s significant stake in the project. And it will create yet more uncertainty in an energy industry in which certainty is critical to fostering long-term investment. But it was the right decision, in light of serious concerns about whether the project represents value for money and the security risks of depending on Chinese investment for a project so critical to long-term national security. Yet the decisions that lie ahead will be even more difficult. Will the government kick the Hinkley decision into the long grass, as it has done with other difficult infrastructure decisions, such as additional airport capacity? Or will it use the coming months to reconsider how nuclear power fits into a long-term energy strategy? It is clear that Hinkley, as currently conceived, represents a terrible deal for taxpayers. Because nuclear power has such significant upfront costs, it will always require some form of state subsidy. By far the most efficient way is for the government to issue nuclear bonds, taking advantage of cheap borrowing costs.

Jeremy Corbyn is facing a backlash from trade unions, party members and his shadow business minister after opposing the construction of a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point. A local chair of Momentum has abandoned her support for the Labour leader, warning that his stance on the £18bn project proved he was an “anarchist” and “not socialist”. Rachel Garrick quit the leftwing grassroots movement and switched to supporting Owen Smith after Corbyn declared his opposition to the new plant at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. “Tories have just put up the cost of your electricity by giving a blank cheque to EDF for a power station that doesn’t work,” he Tweeted.

The party’s shadow energy secretary Barry Gardiner said though his party supported nuclear power in principle, delays and cost overruns meant that the projected needed to be urgently reviewed. “We gave the go-ahead for new nuclear, that was the right decision in 2006. This deal, which is a bad deal, was signed only four years ago,” Mr Gardenier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The Government then came in and said they would pay £92.5 per megawatt hour. You know that onshore wind is that £70 per megawatt hour. “Offshore wind, the latest deal off the coast of Holland, is down to £80 per megawatt hour. And yet we will be paying £92.5 per megawatt hour for 35 years in 2025, index-linked, so it goes up every year. That is a bad deal.” The shadow minister said that as well as cost, the ability to deliver enough energy was a factor and that was why prompt delivery was so crucial.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was concerned about the security implications of a planned Chinese investment in the new Hinkley Point nuclear plant and intervened personally to delay the project, a former colleague and a source said on Saturday. The plan by France’s EDF to build two reactors with financial backing from a Chinese state-owned company was championed by May’s predecessor David Cameron as a sign of Britain’s openness to foreign investment. But just hours before a signing ceremony was due to take place on Friday, May’s new government said it would review the project again, raising concerns that Britain’s approach to infrastructure deals, energy supply and foreign investment may be changing. The decision could prove a test for May, with any attempt to renegotiate the terms of the project potentially straining relations with Paris and Beijing at a time when Britain is seeking to build trade deals following the country’s vote to leave the European Union. “When we were in government Theresa May was quite clear she was unhappy about the rather gung-ho approach to Chinese investment that we had,” Vince Cable, Britain’s former business secretary, told BBC Radio. He later told Sky News her concerns over China’s involvement were linked to national security. “This was an issue that was raised in general but it was also raised specifically in relation to Hinkley,” he said.

Prime Minister Theresa May raised objections to the Hinkley Point nuclear power deal during the coalition government, Lib Dem ex-business secretary Sir Vince Cable has claimed. Sir Vince said the then home secretary was unhappy about the “gung-ho” attitude to Chinese investment displayed by former chancellor George Osborne.

One former cabinet minister said he believed it was “100%” down to Timothy’s intervention that the project had been stalled. “Nick is in an incredibly powerful position,” the source said. “Theresa listens to his every utterance, reads out his speeches and the reshuffle, I’m pretty sure, leads back to him. This is nothing to do with ministers. It will put [the chancellor] Philip Hammond’s nose out of joint and we shall have to see how that plays out.”

EDF’s Board met in Paris on Thursday and gave the green-light for financing of the £18bn Hinkley Point C (HPC) power station in Somerset. A couple of hours later the UK government made the surprise announcement that it would conduct a review of the project before signing the final agreement. The government stated that the review would last until the Autumn. if the review is restricted to just HPC then that might be an opportunity wasted. In my view, HPC is not the most problematic element of the UK’s new nuclear build programme. The government’s decarbonisation strategy requires somewhere between 12,000MW to 18,000MW of new nuclear capacity to be built by 2035. HPC would provide 3,200MW of this. The government has already agreed headline terms for EDF to build a clone of HPC at Sizewell and has inked a deal for EDF’s Chinese partners to build a new reactor design at Bradwell. In addition, three further projects using Japanese and US technology are in development. If all of these projects were to go ahead a total of 18,000MW would be built using four different reactor designs from five different manufacturers. It is expected that the commercial terms for these projects will be closely modelled on the HPC contract. Unfortunately the government has chosen to ignore past lessons about how to do new nuclear programmes. The UK’s disastrous nuclear programme of the 1970s provides ample warning. In that case, the Wilson government decided to buy the unproven British designed Advanced Gas Cooled (AGR) reactor rather than the American Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) that was by then becoming the world standard. They then compounded that mistake by parceling the work out amongst a number of construction consortia all of whom amended the basic design. The result was perhaps the biggest industrial fiasco of the 1970s (a crowded field). The supply chain couldn’t cope with so many variants of the reactor design, lessons from one project couldn’t be applied to the others and economies of scale were lost. The result was that the AGR stations took up to 20 years to complete and all cost many times the original estimates. Even when the stations were finally completed they suffered decades of poor operational performance because each one was effectively a prototype.

Whatever motivated May’s actions, her predecessor didn’t leave her many alternatives to Hinkley, and the challenge for Britain is clear. Its fleet of 15 nuclear power plants is approaching retirement age, and its dirty coal-fired power plants have to be phased out by 2025, under the country’s own stringent climate policies. Cameron’s administration was so dead-set on filling the energy shortfall with new nuclear plants, starting with Hinkley, that it failed to come up with a Plan B. Climate advocates have argued that the gap could be filled with solar, wind and other types of renewable energy, combined with new smart technology to better assess when customers actually need electricity and, eventually, with batteries. The oil and gas industry argues lower-emitting gas could step in when the sun sets or wind dies down. Instead, Cameron opted to pull subsidies for renewable energy sources soon after he won re-election last year, saying they were getting too costly for bill payers. The problem is that Hinkley has been delayed for so long that it’s now unlikely to be completed until the late 2020s at the earliest, assuming May’s government approves it soon.

While others may be professing astonishment over the British government decision to delay this deal on the eve of signing, the Chinese stakeholders are too polite – for now. Despite putting up a third of the funding and sending a delegation to the UK to celebrate what they along with everyone else expected to be the final launch ceremony for the project, a statement from China General Nuclear Power Corporation or CGN expressed understanding. A source close to China General Nuclear Corporation (CGN) has told me the Hinkley Point delay came as a surprise and a pain, and added, everyone in the company is bemused by the way it’s been choreographed. CGN has been given no real insight into the reason for the delay other than being told it was something the prime minister wanted. And unless and until the new British government tells us that national security questions are not one of the component parts that need considering, the question is out there because at least one senior official close to the Prime Minister seems to have a very different view on national security from that of the previous government. Nick Timothy is Theresa May’s chief of staff and a long time adviser. As recently as last October, just as the former Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne were preparing to unveil the Hinkley deal during a state visit by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Mr Timothy expressed strong criticisms of the deal on the Conservativehome website.

Taxpayers could be saddled with a £2.5bn bill for Hinkley Point even if the government walks away from the huge Somerset nuclear power station, experts warn. The French state-owned energy giant EDF, which last week finally committed to building the £18bn plant, has already spent £2.5bn developing the 430-acre site. About 900 staff are working on the project, which will house Britain’s first new reactor since the 1990s. The National Audit Office (NAO), the government’s spending watchdog, is believed to have written a scathing report on the Hinkley contract, branding it “the world’s largest and least appropriate private finance initiative deal”. Industry sources said the report would criticise the way its funding has been structured. The contract heaps construction risk on EDF, meaning French taxpayers must pick up the bill if costs spiral. But the NAO report — due to be published when the contract is signed — is expected to say that a smarter transfer of risk could have delivered a better deal for British consumers.

No sooner had EDF confirmed its decision that evening than the celebrations were thrown into turmoil. A surprise statement from Greg Clark, the new energy secretary, declared his intent to reassess the deal. The government would “now consider carefully all the component parts of this project and make its decision in early autumn”. It was a hammer blow for the project — one that leaves Britain’s entire nuclear power renaissance in turmoil. It adds Hinkley to a long list of big infrastructure projects — including the High Speed 2 rail line and another London airport runway — that have been thrown up in the air by Theresa May since Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The UK power market is changing rapidly. The plunging cost of clean power technology, such as solar panels, coupled with advances in batteries and less power-hungry equipment, could make more homes self-sufficient for energy and less reliant on big power stations. There are some who have advocated a “dash for gas” instead of nuclear power. “It [Hinkley] is an expensive way to get electricity,” warned Iain Conn, the boss of British Gas owner Centrica, on Thursday. WHEN May swept into Downing Street earlier this month, nuclear insiders began looking for clues about the former home secretary’s views on the industry. It did not take long for them to find an article written in October by her influential adviser, Nick Timothy, on the website Conservative Home. Entitled “The government is selling our national security to China”, it swiftly did the rounds between executives’ email boxes. IF GREG CLARK’S statement caused shockwaves in China, the impact on politicians and executives in Tokyo was no less severe. He had landed in Japan on Monday to reassure them the government was committed to Hitachi and Toshiba’s new nuclear projects at Horizon in Anglesey and NuGen in Cumbria respectively. Yet here he was threatening to renege on another foreign deal that had taken years to reach. Insiders say the Japanese technology giants have been left concerned and bewildered about Britain’s commitment. “If they do a deal, what’s to say the government won’t change its mind?” said one. “The biggest risk for a multibillion-pound investment like a nuclear power station is not building the thing, but the regulatory and political uncertainty. After the damage done by Brexit, this is immensely costly.” Hitachi and Toshiba are now trying to work out how they will pay for their new nuclear power stations, next in line behind Hinkley. This delay will only make those talks more challenging. “If they think, ‘It’s OK — we’ve got Horizon and NuGen instead’, they’re so wrong it’s unreal,” said an industry insider. “This is all about investor confidence.” So what else could lie behind the delay? If May and her chancellor Philip Hammond want to use it to renegotiate the terms of the strike price, it could prove fatal. EDF has already warned that delays are trimming the returns that it hopes to make on the reactor, giving it a projected rate of return of 9% over the life of the project. With EDF and French taxpayers on the hook if the scheme’s costs spiral, the company will resist any attempt to haggle, or it could walk away. Nor can EDF’s scheme do without China’s involvement. It needs CGN’s construction expertise — amassed during the continuing construction of a power plant in Taishan, southeast China.

Even if it ultimately gets the green light in the autumn, choosing to reappraise the Hinkley C project is a significant act in itself. The pause has cheered and emboldened enemies of the plant, both those who are against it on the grounds that it is a vanity project that will prove ruinously expensive to the taxpayer and those who are opposed to nuclear reactors because they involve splitting uranium atoms. Colleagues report that she hates having to commit to a course before she has examined all the angles and the Hinkley project is freighted with a lot of risks. The near-horizon cost is £18bn and rising. The potential future charge on taxpayers and electricity bill payers is higher still. Britain has had a disillusioning history when it comes to nuclear power, a technology this country largely invented but has been very poor at using successfully. If Mrs May wants to do further reading on the subject, I recommend Professor Simon Taylor’s excellent recent book, The Fall and Rise of Nuclear Power in Britain. When so much money is involved, and so many people think there is such potential for this project to go very badly wrong, it is not really so astonishing that Mrs May wanted a pause.

Theresa May blocked the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant to prove she will not be a pushover as she tours the world seeking post-Brexit trade deals, it emerged last night. Well-placed sources insisted the Prime Minister’s decision to delay the £24 billion deal did not mean she was about to pull the plug on it. They said she was determined to get good value now that the UK was moving to a position where it would be free to negotiate its trade deals outside the EU.

Wind and solar plants are intermittent power suppliers. They often provide power when it is not needed but fail to supply it when it is required. And until a method of storing energy on an industrial scale is developed, this drawback will continue to bedevil its deployment across the country. Research into ways to store energy on a large scale is now being pursued across the globe but may take decades. Similarly, other game-changing energy projects are being worked on.

AN ANGRY Whitehaven town councillor claims she has been gagged from discussing NuGen’s Moorside project. Coun Jayne Laine, for Mirehouse ward, is disputing a decision to prevent her debating NuGen’s plans at any town council meetings. This is because her home is included in the red lined search of the proposed development and she is considered to have a disclosable pecuniary interest (level of financial interest). Coun Laine applied to Whitehaven Town Council’s clerk, Les Abrahams, for a four-year dispensation, which would enable her to discuss plans during meetings, but this has been refused.

Today is the final chance for people to have their say in Stage Two of the public consultation into a new nuclear power station in Cumbria. The Moorside power station could provide enough electricity to power seven percent of the UK, according to NuGen, the company behind the plans. They say it would also create thousands of jobs, and have promised major investment in local infrastructure and services.

High in the stark Nevada desert, a couple of hundred miles north-west of Las Vegas, is the shimmering circular mirage of Crescent Dunes. Ten thousand silvery glass panes, each measuring 115 square metres, surround a tall central tower, which stands like a twinkling needle in the featureless landscape around it. Resembling a fabulous alien metropolis, Crescent Dunes is in fact a highly sophisticated, mile-and-a-half-wide solar power plant – “the next generation in solar energy”, according to Kevin Smith, one of the project’s founders.

A think tank that includes senior Conservative figures among its members has called for the government to call time on the Hinkley C nuclear power plant. Bright Blue, whose advisory board includes Francis Maude, Nicky Morgan and former DECC minister Greg Barker, has said the government needs a new “plan A”. The group stresses that its position is not necessarily endorsed by all members of the organisation, which includes more than 100 parliamentarians. “The Government should abandon Hinkley C – pursuing it in light of all the evidence of cost reductions in other technologies would be deeply irresponsible,” said Ben Caldecott, associate fellow, Bright Blue. “We need a new ‘Plan A’. This must be focused on bringing forward sufficient renewables, electricity storage, and energy efficiency to more than close any gap left in the late 2020s by Hinkley not proceeding. This would be sensible, achievable, and cheap.” Zac Goldsmith, also a Bright Blue member, has welcomed the government’s rethink.

Ben Caldecott: Now that we seem to be re-entering reality, there is an opportunity to develop a new ‘Plan A’. At Bright Blue, we think that the Government should substitute Hinkley for a combination of clean energy, electricity storage, and energy efficiency. This would have a beneficial effect on each aspect of the Government’s energy trilemma: security of supply, affordability, and decarbonisation. A range of technologies can easily fill the envisioned capacity that Hinkley would have provided in the late 2020s had it been successfully delivered on the current (and already significantly delayed) construction schedule. They can also do this much more cheaply. Cancelling Hinkley would provide greater certainty for investors in other technologies thereby encouraging investment in new capacity today. Moreover, there are significant benefits for pollution, energy bills, and system security of pursuing a combination of clean energy, electricity storage, and energy efficiency to close any capacity gap left by Hinkley. This is a significant opportunity and we hope that the Government’s review results in the acceptance that there are cheaper and more practicable options to choose from.

It was the lunch that never was. Cantonese-style pork crackling, Somerset brie and mackerel ceviche with creme fraiche were all on the menu for the 150 VIPs invited to Hinkley Point on Friday. The guests were due to celebrate a third nuclear power station at the site finally being approved. In keeping with the rest of the decade-long battle to build Hinkley Point C, however, the celebrations did not go as scheduled. By Friday morning the marquee was being packed away and the guests were nowhere to be seen. The French company had not been expected to make a decision until later in the year, so the announcement was a surprise. After 10 years of debate about the cost, safety and quality of the Hinkley Point C project, the final stretch looked to be in sight. When Theresa May met François Hollande last week Britain’s prime minister told the French president that she would like to review the project herself. David Cameron and George Osborne had been enthusiastic cheerleaders. On Wednesday night May called Hollande again to confirm the government’s new timetable. Despite the French government being the biggest shareholder in EDF, it appears the 18 members of the company’s board headed for the crucial vote on Thursday afternoon with no knowledge of May’s rethink. Before the board meeting, the saga took another twist. An EDF director opposed to the new nuclear plant resigned and said he would not attend the meeting. There could still be a celebratory lunch in the autumn if May’s government approves the project, but the hangover from the lunch-that-never-was could be painful.

Theresa May’s government has read the small print of the Hinkley deal and maybe it’s become spooked. But whether ministers are specifically anxious by the phenomenal long-term cost of the project, the Chinese state’s involvement, or the design and near-impossible construction of what would be the most ambitious and expensive power station in the world is not yet clear. Possibly, the new prime minister has been led to understand that the whole darn thing must be rethought. Or it could just be a momentary delay. What is not in doubt is that government is still firmly committed to nuclear power as part of the UK energy mix. So it seems unlikely that No 10 is planning a radical rethink of energy policy and a return to the pre-Blair, renewable-only days. Far more likely, the plan being hurriedly hatched is to renegotiate the deal with EDF and the Chinese, in the expectation that the French company’s tricky finances will force it to abandon the Hinkley ship. Then if the EDF deal unravels it will clear the way for government to swiftly adopt Plan B. This could involve the business and energy secretary, Greg Clark, inviting the Japanese giant Hitachi to expand its existing programme of two new reactors in Britain. The company, which owns the Horizon nuclear consortium, is well down the road of planning and building a new 2,700MW power station at Wylfa on Anglesey, and is already negotiating price guarantees with government.

Barry Gardiner: There was a time for sober reflection on what had been a badly negotiated nuclear power contract, which left UK customers paying £92.50MW/h for electricity 35 years into the future, when the cost of onshore wind is already down to £70 and offshore is being delivered for £80. Had the government radically renegotiated the contract two years ago, I would have applauded them. By leaving it to this late stage they could insist on tweaking the contract to secure a reduced price every year the project is further delayed beyond 2025, but to risk 25,000 jobs and send such an appalling signal to investors about the reliability of the UK as an investment partner is an act of recklessness, as damaging for the manner in which it was done as for its substance. I support the development of new nuclear as part of the energy mix we need to deliver a low-carbon future. Hinkley Point C itself can provide the UK with 7% of our total expected electricity needs. But providing EDF with a 35-year guarantee of £92.50 per unit of power, with bill-payers topping up the difference if wholesale prices fell below that level, was a catastrophically bad deal. For two years, Labour has been calling for the government to develop a plan B, but ministers have told us they didn’t need one. This latest delay could mean the government and public will pay through the roof for expensive back-up capacity to ensure the lights don’t go out.

The boss of EDF says he is still confident about Hinkley Point C being built despite the UK government throwing the nuclear power plant into doubt by launching a fresh review. Jean-Bernard Levy, the chief executive of EDF, said on Friday he had no doubt about the government’s support for the £18bn project.

Why have ministers delayed final approval for Hinkley Point C? The government’s decision to delay final approval of the controversial Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has cast fresh doubt on the project. Theresa May’s government plans to review the proposed £18bn plant before making an announcement in early autumn.

Simon Jenkins: The message of last night’s Hinkley Point fiasco could not be clearer. The project cannot go ahead. But who in government has the guts to say so? Hinkley Point C is the product of prestige, political vanity, diplomatic machismo and corporate lobbying. It was an example of how rotten Whitehall’s oversight of government became in the Cameron years. Now, the sole defence of Hinkley from its apologists concerns the cost of cancellation, in jobs, sunk costs wasted, Foreign Office embarrassment and a hole in government energy policy. None are good arguments for proceeding. Energy experts are now emphatic.

Mrs May told Mr Hollande in person last week when she went to Paris — and over the phone on Wednesday night — that she would review the project and postpone a final decision by several weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Catching the French president off guard, she said she would “need time” to decide for herself on the project. Intrigued, the French leader asked whether such a review would force a delay to EDF’s board meeting the following week. Mrs May sought to reassure her French counterpart by saying it was not a sign of opposition. On Wednesday, she called him again to inform him of the autumn deadline. But on Thursday night, the UK government’s announcement seems to have come as a complete surprise to senior EDF managers involved in the Hinkley Point talks.

Chinese investors expressed surprise on Friday at Theresa May’s move to delay the final go-ahead for the Hinkley Point nuclear plant, a decision seen as part of a rethink on Chinese investment in the UK. A senior official in the Chinese nuclear industry who was scheduled to attend the signing said: “We are really questioning what’s going on. We were all set to go over when it was suddenly pushed back. It seems the UK government has a lot of doubts, we aren’t sure where all this is coming from.” The official said the project still made economic sense: “We believe Hinkley can still be built under budget and on time.” The UK’s decision to delay signals fears in Downing Street that Beijing could “shut down Britain’s energy production at will”. Nick Timothy, Mrs May’s joint chief of staff and a highly influential figure in the new administration, was a critic of David Cameron’s attempts to secure Chinese “gold”, which he said was buying British silence on human rights abuses. But Mr Timothy also said Chinese investment in sensitive sectors raised security concerns, including the possibility that Beijing could close down nuclear reactors in Britain as a form of energy blackmail.

National security concerns about China’s involvement in constructing Britain’s first new nuclear power plant for 20 years are believed to have contributed to Theresa May’s last-minute decision to delay a deal on the £18bn project. The Prime Minister’s unexpected refusal to give Hinkley Point the green light after it was approved by the board of the French energy firm EDF dismayed the Chinese, which has put up a third of the funding for the project. Mrs May repeatedly raised concerns about the risk to national security posed by increased Chinese investment in the UK while she was Home Secretary. Mrs May’s 11th-hour decision to delay Hinkley Point wrongfooted a delegation from the China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) which had already flown into Britain expecting to sign the finalised documents yesterday. Mrs May’s close adviser and joint chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has also condemned China’s involvement in the UK’s nuclear sector due to security concerns over giving the country ¬access to important national infrastructure.

The decision to halt Hinkley Point last night cast the spotlight back on the hugely controversial subsidy deal thrashed out by George Osborne in his desperation to secure Chinese backing for the nuclear plant. Alex Wild, research director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘It’s encouraging the Government is rethinking this terrible deal that would see consumers paying exorbitant bills for decades. ‘The technology is completely unproven and the costs and time needed to build the reactors has already doubled since the initial proposal. The new department needs to completely rethink the energy policies and arbitrary targets which are driving up bills and destroying jobs. ‘Even if the Government decides more nuclear capacity is needed, there are far more affordable options available.’

The sudden decision to put on hold the £18bn contract for a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point is “bewildering and bonkers”, a furious union official has said. There are fears for the 25,000 jobs that depend on the vast project, which was to be financed jointly by the French energy firm EDF and the Chinese – though environmentalists and others hoped the delay will lead to it being scrapped outright.

The British government cast doubt on the future of a controversial 18-billion pound ($24 billion) project to build Britain’s first nuclear power plant in more than 20 years, pledging to review the deal just hours after the board of France’s state-run utility gave the go-ahead. “I have no doubt about the support of the British government led by Mrs. May,” EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said on Friday. He referred to a recent statement by Britain’s new chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, backing the project. A decision by May’s government to back away from the project would be a significant policy change, abandoning Britain’s plan to use nuclear stations to replace aging reactors and ensure the country meets its commitments to cut emissions. It would also end the biggest Franco-British industrial project in a generation as the U.K. looks to reconfigure relationships with its continental neighbours after last month’s vote to leave the European Union. The delay doesn’t mean the government’s energy policy has changed, said the two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The CEOs of EDF’s U.K. business and its partner China General Nuclear Power Corp. were reassured of this by Business and Energy Secretary Clark in separate meetings in London Friday, one of the people said. Prime Minister May had been planning to make a decision on the project in September and needs more time to study the details, the two people said.

UK White Elephant stumbles. The British government astonished the nuclear industry late last night by refusing to go ahead with plans to build the world’s largest nuclear plant until it has reviewed every aspect of the project. The decision was announced hours after a bruising meeting of the board of the giant French energy company EDF, at which directors decided by 10 votes to seven to go ahead with the building of two 1,600 megawatt reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, southwest England.

Catherine Mitchell: EDF has just given the go-ahead to investment in Hinkley Point C (HPC, a new build nuclear power plant). However, the GB Government has announced that it is going to ‘think carefully’ and will announce its decision in the Autumn. This is a good decision for multiple reasons. In her inaugural speech, our new Prime Minister Theresa May said: ‘’We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you.’’ And then a few days later, she set out the principles of her Government’s economic policy, one dimension of which is support for an industrial policy: ‘“We need to reform the economy to allow more people to share in the country’s prosperity. We need to put people back in control of their lives. We need to give more people more opportunity’’. The decision to go ahead with HPC would do the complete opposite of giving people more control over their lives; it would be a continuation of David Cameron’s policy which supported big business interests over society’s (and individual) interests; and it would be a blow to GB innovation. Momentum within global energy systems is towards decentralisation of technologies and towards operating energy systems in a ‘smarter’ and more flexible and integrated way. For once, energy policy goals – of decarbonising the energy system; making energy affordable to customers; and maintaining security – is all better met within this decentralised system, and technology has developed to enable its practice. If we want to decarbonise our energy system we have to move beyond electricity to also include heat, capture the demand side, and start to use storage that electric vehicles (and other possibilities) offer. This integration is best done locally. Total infrastructure costs should be lower; customer bills will be lower the more energy efficient the system; customers can be paid for any demand side response services they provide to the system; and the local energy expenditure can be maintained in the area for the benefit of local customers. It needs a local co-ordinating actor to make it happen, and this could be distribution service providers (DSPs) – something which IGov has championed. HPC is expected online, at best, in 2025. However, onshore wind and large scale solar are already competitive against nuclear, and increasingly so against gas. Offshore wind would also be cheaper than nuclear if they received a 35 year contract like HPC, rather than their own 15 years. And Dong has announced a price of 72.7 Euros/MWh (about £60/MWh (depending on exchange rate)) for their Dutch offshore wind farm. Small scale photovoltaic solar is also becoming competitive, hence the huge uptake in small scale solar PV in GB. Furthermore, the demand side would be even cheaper if included in markets on an equal basis with supply. Using the £30bn for a rolling German kfW-type energy efficiency scheme would permanently bring down total energy demand; bring down customer bills, and make customer homes more comfortable. Decarbonising GB and the world is cheaper and easier (because less gases will have been emitted), the quicker we start. Waiting until 2025 for HPC at best, when all these other options would be quicker and cheaper, does not make obvious policy sense.

Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Barry Gardiner told BBC Radio 4’sTodayprogramme the government should change the terms of the Hinkley deal. Describing the situation as “absolute chaos”, Gardiner said the current deal was a “bad deal” for UK taxpayers. “I would change the deal,” he said. “The government is now reviewing this project – quite rightly so. But what they must do is root and branch review it. They must review the base price at £92.50, because that is too high. They must also then put in a taper that says if the project is further delayed beyond 2025, for each year’s further delay that price comes down.” Environmental camapigners welcomed the government’s decision to pause for thought. Friends of the Earth campaigner Mike Childs said the move is an opportunity to do the “right and popular” thing and end support for Hinkley. “Margaret Thatcher cancelled the nuclear build programmes in the early 1990s because the economics were dreadful. Hopefully Theresa May is about to do the same, and prevent hard-pressed energy bill payers being saddled with unnecessary cost well into the future,” he said in a statement. “Renewables and energy storage are a much better deal. With prices tumbling and speedy construction we can press on with generating masses of home-grown energy.”

Paul Dorfman: Your leader “No Point in Hinkley” hits the nail firmly on the head (July 29). The consensus among economists, nuclear industry insiders and other commentators — including the government’s spending regulatory body, the National Audit Office — is that to pursue the project is to commit fiscal hara-kiri. The unfortunate reality is that the push for Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is neither rational nor evidence-based. Rather, it is a political and corporate face-saving exercise on behalf of EDF and the French state. Meanwhile, evidence for the coming renewable evolution is mounting, with a very recent BP report confirming that “renewables account for all the increase in global power generation in 2015, with wind growing by 17 per cent and solar by 32 per cent”. Times are changing, and perhaps UK plc should consider changing with them.

Dr Niels Kroninger, Green Hedge Energy: Greg Clark’s decision to review the Hinkley project again looks sensible as it has become abundantly clear that there are many alternatives that will produce reliable low-carbon electricity cheaper and earlier. Until its demise, the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) ignored reports showing that solar, wind, storage and back-up gas can produce the same output as Hinkley Point but a decade earlier and substantially cheaper. DECC repeated its (factually wrong) mantra that only nuclear could provide reliable low-carbon electricity. We must hope that the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy looks at the facts and does not commit to overspending hundreds of millions of pounds a year for 35 years.

Andrew Warren: When Hinkley Point C was first mooted by the government in 2006, official projections were that today’s electricity consumption levels would be more than 25 per cent higher than they currently are. Despite our GDP having increased by 18 per cent over the decade, demand for electricity has consistently fallen year on year, largely due to far more efficient usage. Do we really still need this expensive white elephant?

Prof Sue Roaf: The plant is now predicted to cost £24bn and will power 6m homes, providing electricity for 30 years at an extortionate fixed price. For the same price we could put solar hot water and PV with battery storage on the same 6m homes and thus taking a quarter of British homes out of fuel poverty for ever. We already have over a million solar roofs in Britain on the homes of people who want to decouple their futures from the greed of energy utilities. Tens of millions have been invested in UK solar energy research and already £2.5bn has been invested in moving some dirt and laying some concrete at Hinkley Point. Who paid for that? Not the French or Chinese. This nuclear gamble is madness and the fundamental question that needs answering is why?

Lord Hutton: Your leader misses the point. Hinkley Point C is what the UK needs, but even a project of its scale, which will generate 7 per cent of the UK’s electricity, is only one part of a much wider solution needed to meet the UK’s daunting energy challenge. We need as low a carbon energy mix as possible, with nuclear working alongside renewables and gas.

Tom Greatrex, the head of Britain’s Nuclear Industry Association said he remains confident it will get built. He said he was, “slightly disappointed that we haven’t got a contract being signed immediately, but not disappointed in the sense that the government and [UK business and energy minister] Greg Clark have made a statement… making it very clear that he’s committed to new nuclear being part of the future energy mix for the UK.”

There are a number of things that I really don’t want to hear discussed on the news, especially in a manner that resembles the couple of expository lines frantically shouted at the start of a disaster movie. Nuclear power is very much one of those things. Nevertheless, here we all are, speculating as to whether the Chinese might build weaknesses into the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant’s computer systems, just in case they might at some point decide to snatch control of the facility. Which hardly suggests an open, collaborative relationship of trust.

Dr David Lowry: The huge marquee for VIP nuclear guests was already erected at the Hinkley site; champagne was already on ice; VIPs were en route to Somerset to party at the final breakthrough, when hundreds of thousands of contractual pages were due to be authorised with co-signatures of the contracting parties. Suddenly, everything was off. So what really happened? The most convincing explanation for the cold feet developed by the Prime Minister, Theresa May, is the influence of her newly re-appointed, but loyal, policy advisor, Nick Timothy, who had previously been her Chief of Staff before going off to become the Director of the New Schools Network. Last October, out of Government, he wrote on the ConservativeHome website of his doubts about the UK nuclear industry collaborating with the Chinese sate investment bank and nuclear companies to build reactors in the UK.

With the French government owned EDF Board having potentially signed one of the most expensive suicide notes ever in corporate history, giving the go-ahead to the Hinkley C Nuclear Plant, Britain right now is teetering on the brink of the biggest corporate/political corruption scandal in its history. The nuclear industry has bought all three of Britain’s political parties. It is the most classic example of The Corrupted Political System Pillar of The Prostitute State. Senior figures or members of their families from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories all are political prostitutes working for the notoriously corrupt nuclear industry. They are lining their pockets to push through the biggest heist ever perpetrated on the British people.

Nearly 150,000 people have signed our petition demanding the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, drop Hinkley and invest in renewables instead. Can you share the petition with your friends and family and help us reach 200,000 before the government makes its final decision?

A new nuclear power station planned for Anglesey will not be affected by the last-minute decision to review the Hinkley Point C plant, it is understood. A government insider said that the decision to review French energy giant EDF’s plans for Somerset was unrelated to the viability of the Wylfa Newydd proposals being developed by Japanese firm Hitachi.

Nuclear industry monitors have endorsed safety procedures at Suffolk’s Sizewell B power plant. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that the station was well prepared in the event of an emergency. The publication follows a three-week review last October by an operational safety team made up of 15 experts from the UK, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

Construction of Sizewell C – now a step closer following agreement yesterday for the financial investment for Hinkley Point C – would boost Suffolk’s economy by £1bn over a decade, it was claimed last night.

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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